Daily Archives: November 21, 2011

I don’t know whether I’ve ever linked to these folks before, but they apparently love springerle! (That’s an old German/Swiss kind of anise cookie, named that because they “spring up” when they bake.)

(If you don’t like anise, you can also use springerle molds to make Spekulaas/windmill St. Nicholas Day cookies from Holland; and/or gingerbread cookies. House on the Hill has recipes for both of these.)

These folks have a huge selection of new and reproduction old designs for springerle molds. (Not the ones my great-great-grandmother brought over from Germany, but some very nice ones. And probably not everyone wants carrots and onions designs on their cookies, though some of the flying bird motifs look similar.) There are lots of rabbits and poinsettias and other good things.

But as is only right and proper for a cookie art custom that comes from Catholic and Lutheran areas of the Germanic countries, House on the Hill also features lots of reproduction Bible story molds, holy day and feastday molds, Jesus and/or Lamb molds, Mary molds, and saint molds. (Well, maybe not so Lutheran, those last.)

See, the idea was that when you went to a fair for a feastday or holy day, you probably wanted to eat cookies directly tied to the reason for the liturgical season. And that meant biting the head off your cookie St. Cecilia, or Easter scene, or First Communion picture, or what have you.

In medieval times, these sorts of scenes were often painted with various medieval natural food colorings as well. So it was sort of like having your holy card and eating it too.

(If the idea of doing this disturbs you, you can go with the rabbits and pineapples and such. Nothing wrong with the simple designs at all.)